Paul Bacsich
Founder and Managing Director, Matic Media Ltd, UK
Paul Bacsich is the Founder and Managing Director of Matic Media Ltd, a consultancy active in online learning since 1996. In addition he consults for the SeroHE division of Sero Consulting Ltd as a Senior Associate.
He has a long-standing interest in Open Education via a large EU project (POERUP) and several EU/European Parliament studies: he is Co-Coordinator of the Open Education Working Group and an Ambassador for the global advocacy of OER and a member of the OER Advocacy Committee of ICDE.
He is a co-founder of Multeversity, a start-up in online/blended post-secondary education which aims in due course to be an accredited university and higher vocational provider. He also has had involvement in other early-stage online providers over the last six years and has done several studies of them.
His current main publicly visible activities are in leadership in e-learning, via the Erasmus+ D-TRANSFORM project, and Open Education policy analysis across EU Member States (he expects the report will be published soon). These draw on and continue his work over 10 years work on EU open and distance education projects.
In addition to his public work he consults for a number of international, government, commercial, venture fund and university clients on market/competitor/pricing research, policy, education funding models and retention strategies. He has recently finalised a report on credit recognition and transfer for online masters' programmes, for a university client in Canada.
In 2015-16 Paul chaired the review panel for the Vision and Strategy Appraisal of the UK Open University Library, where he interviewed over 70 staff and students and carried out substantial comparative and policy research. He also chaired the E-learning review panel for Uppsala University, with three days of intensive meetings and presentations, and spent four months chairing a task force for the National Forum for Learning and Teaching in Ireland to prepare a scoping document on infrastructure issues related to online learning. He also continued work on reviewing European and Anglophone country activity in ICT in higher education for national agencies in the UK and will soon start work on another review of a department in a leading UK university.
Some of his recent thinking can be found in his UNESCO policy brief on "Alternative Models of Education Delivery" and in a paper for the "Open Education 2030" higher education workshop run by the EU. He remains very interested in "Multiversity" models (see Multeversity) and competence-based provision, based on his earlier studies on "Time and e-learning", developed from a speech given in Austria, a country with which he has increasing links.
In the university phase of his career he was a researcher at Oxford University, had many roles over 25 years at the UK Open University, and was for seven years Professor of Telematics at Sheffield Hallam University and then a Director at the UK e-University. He was also Visiting Professor at Middlesex University and Advisor to the Rector of the Arab Open University.
He has knowledge of and/or experience in higher education in many developed countries.
Links
http://www.serohe.co.uk/team/professor-paul-bacsich/
http://iite.unesco.org/pics/publications/en/files/3214709.pdf
https://independent.academia.edu/PaulBacsich
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bacsich/
Links
http://www.sero.co.uk/people/paul/http://www.matic-media.co.ukhttp://bacsich.typepad.com/elearning/